Chapter Text
Shikamaru stares at his bedroom ceiling silently and tosses a stress ball into the air to catch.
Shikamaru took to the roof and dashed through the tops before he found Sakura's place. He hesitated when he reached the front door. Part of him thought that he should knock, but the other part of him believed that she wouldn't allow him entry into her home.
In the end, he decided to use the ninja route. He leapt up to her windowsill, crouched low, and shifted his stance to peer through the hazy glass.
Sakura lay on her bed, back against the window, as she stared at her open closet. There was a messy array of clothes sitting on her vanity table, various medical diagrams and notes pinned on her walls. She would despise him if she knew the stories he could tell just from her room. Shikamaru unlatched the window from the back with a quick fire-based fūinjutsu, quickly taking note of the formula to lecture her on the importance of traps, and crawled over the open space.
After all, it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
His knee unfortunately banged against the chaise underneath the windowsill, startling the medic on the bed and into action.
"What are you—" Sakura had a kunai to the neck after he closed the window shut and stared at him with red-rimmed eyes, incredulous.
He huffed despite the weapon to his throat, "Your reflexes are getting better."
"Are you insane?" she hissed and removed the blade from his neck. She peeked at her shut door and tossed her kunai to the corner of the room. "What are you doing here? My parents are visiting!"
"I know," Shikamaru fought the urge to run his hand through his hair, but settled for the side of his jaw and down the back of his neck. He said quietly, "I don't want to leave it—us like that. I can't."
Sakura sighed, more tired than exasperated, "Shikamaru, I-I can't talk to you right now. I feel like I'll say something—"
"Okay, so don't talk if you don't want to," he finished desperately, and his hands curled over dainty shoulders. "Just listen."
She stared at him owlishly. Shikamaru maneuvered them to her bed, he sat on one side and she on the other, but kept her hands in his lap—he didn't know if he did this for her or for him.
Shikamaru inhaled shakily, "One of the rules my dad has with my mom is to never go to bed angry."
Shikaku had told them this after a particularly bad fight with his mom. He was grateful to his father's insight back then because he never actually saw his parents fight, and as a child, he was smart enough to make his own deductions and would've attempted to play peacemaker should the scenario happen near him. But there was a difference between a child playing an adult and an adult playing a child—his parents were careful not to let that happen. Bearing witness to those types of conflict at a young age would've exacerbated his already matured instincts, and even though he would've ignored it like most things, that doesn't mean that he wouldn't think about it.
Sakura recognized the weight of his words, but her current emotions refused to act on them.
"I-I'm sorry I pushed," Shikamaru said softly, and his eyes were warm against the candlelight. "I know that you had a hard time navigating your relationship with Ino, or maybe my team in general, and I shouldn't have needled you. But you close yourself up to getting hurt, and then it's hard to talk to you without hurting you. I don't want to hurt you, Sakura. The chunin exams are around the corner,r and you deserve that promotion, you know? I figured if you paired up with Ino and Chouji, it would be better than a stranger. I guess I was wrong."
Sakura looked at him for a long moment and exhaled, "Thank you for apologizing." She looked down at their hands and swallowed. "I don't appreciate you manipulating me and your teammates to come to an agreement. I understand that it's in your nature and you believed that it was to my benefit, but I'm not stupid, Shikamaru, I knew what you were doing."
Shikamaru flinched at the assessment, and no matter how true it was, it was a bastard move of his.
"I want you to understand why you not only upset me, but hurt me," she explained and chewed on her bottom lip. "I wanted to have a similar conversation Ino, but I can't speak to her when she behaves like a child when things don't go her own way. Maybe it is too late for things to get better."
Shikamaru pressed his lips together and remembered to gentle his tone, "Sakura. You dumped Ino for Sasuke; she felt betrayed. Even then, you two made up. Sure, it's not going to be how it used to be, but friends fight. She will get over it."
His tone may be gentle, but his words were not. Sakura snorted, "I didn't dump Ino for Sasuke; it was an excuse. A poor one at least."
He was dreading this conversation—the Sasuke situation. He cleared his throat. "What do you mean?"
"Sasuke was an excuse, though not entirely – I used to distance myself from Ino." Sakura said after a moment. "I regretted it a couple of days after the fact, but Ino was content to mimic the same bullying behavior I had been subject to before. Only this time, I could fight back," she doesn't look at him when she speaks. "I needed to learn to stand on my own two feet, as a ninja. Graduating from the academy meant that we became an adults in the eyes of the village, and I didn't want to—I couldn't be in her shadow anymore. I didn't want to be known as that poor pink-haired civvy that tragically got herself killed."
Shikamaru winced.
"I needed to be her equal," she said quietly. "And Ino was content with letting me be her lackey. I tried to explain this to her years ago, and she brushed it off. She still does it. It's like nothing has changed for her."
He loves Ino, he's one of her best friends and teammates, but he can't watch her strip Sakura down to nothing. He understood this at least and wished he had a bit more insight when he did what he did. He miscalculated badly. “Ino is, she's just jealous. You used to be on her footsteps, and now you're so far past the finish line she can't even see you. You didn't become her equal; you became her superior, and it bothers her. She also thinks you've chosen Hinata and Tenten over her, and I think that hurt her. In her eyes, you have replaced her."
"Because the world doesn't revolve around her anymore?" Sakura muttered bitterly and then flopped back onto the bed.
True, but Shikamaru had to defend his friend even though he shouldn't have had to. He squeezed her hand and reminded her, "That wasn't nice."
"I know," she sighed. "But Hinata and Tenten, they were there for me. Ino was content to watch me crash and burn in the end. Of course, I'm going to be more comfortable around them. They don't push me down to keep themselves up."
"I know," he repeated and laid down next to her. "Ino has to grow up, I agree with you, but you have to meet her in the middle. Don't write her off so easily, and Chouji...well, Chouji would rather feed you and listen than talk about solutions. He even tried to talk to you after Naruto left, but you were always doing something—whether it was running errands for the Hokage or training."
Sakura stared at him and pressed her lips together. "That brings me back to my original point," she whispered, "You humiliated me tonight."
Shikamaru stiffened at the accusation.
"I told you repeatedly that I didn't want to go to dinner," she continued and swallowed the nausea creeping up her throat. "I am not very comfortable going to any type of Rookie Nine's engagements unless ordered by the Kage. I don't have a team, Shikamaru. My teammates are a public enemy number three and an ignorant jinchuriki. How do you think it makes me feel when everyone is there with their team and I'm an outsider looking in?"
"Sakura..." Shikamaru rasped and grabbed her hand again, "You are not an outsider—"
"—but I am," Sakura shook her head. "As much as you say I'm not, I'm still the anomaly in the room. Then you tried to get Ino and Chouji to take me in as their third teammate, like I'm some sort of dog. They wouldn't even have considered taking me in as their teammate if you didn't say something."
A pit lodged itself into his throat.
"I don't want to be someone's last choice," Sakura cried, and her eyes pricked with tears. "I don't want to be someone's leftovers. I don't w-want to be overlooked. I have been abandoned, disregarded, discarded, and neglected my entire shinobi career—my teammates ran away, my sensei ignored me, and my graduating class didn't look twice at me until they needed help. I don't need you to imply how alone I am. I know—"
She broke into an uncontrollable sob and Shikamaru felt himself wither in disgust and anger at himself—for the people that made Sakura feel like she wasn't worth the dirt on their shoe. He pulled her into his arms, regardless of their awkward position on the bed, and hugged her tight enough that the pieces of her jaded heart would stick back together.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." Shikamaru peppered kisses on her hair and her face. His heart was beating so fast, and he was sorry. He was sorry that he didn't do more, didn't know how to do more, that he wrote her off because he didn't know—wasn't aware that they were still friends.
Because the truth was, they weren't friends, not really, not in the way friends should begin, because they were always meant to be more.
Shikamaru fussed until she stopped the tears, "You are brilliant, you know? Brighter than any star or light that we have known, because you work so hard and are underestimated because of your hard-earned abilities. And you remain kind in the face of it. You are compassionate and strong—don't look at me like that. Anyone who can persevere with the shitty hand you have been given has to have balls of steel."
She giggled at that.
"My mom told me something years ago, when she was an active shinobi," he said quietly. "A self-made shinobi is a ninja whose origins do not come from a clan nor a special dojutsu. They are someone who endures and persists through everything life throws at them and still remains victorious. Those, she said, are the best types of shinobi."
Sakura quietly absorbed that and then rolled her eyes. “And who do you know that is self-made shinobi?"
"You obviously," Shikamaru scoffed.
She slapped his chest.
"But kaa-chan was talking about the Fourth Hokage," he offered after a moment. "He didn't come from a clan or had any fancy eyes. He became one of the best shinobi Konoha ever created."
Sakura didn't know whether to feel flattered or mortified by the comparison. She pressed her forehead against his and said, "I can't forgive you right now, but your dad was right. We shouldn't go to bed upset."
Shikamaru smiled ruefully, "You're important to me, Sakura. I can't promise you that I won't do anything like this again, but know that I never intend to hurt you. Ever."
Shikaku peers through the door, "Shikamaru? Shouldn't you be asleep?"
"Tou-chan," Shikamaru exhales. "I think I messed up."
"Well, we can't all be geniuses," Shikaku snorts and takes a seat on his bed. "What's going on, son?"
It takes Shikamaru a while to articulate his feelings, followed by the interactions his team has had with Sakura. Then he must explain Sakura's quest to isolate herself despite having comrades. Lastly, he had to explain last night's disastrous dinner, followed by his conversation with Sakura at her home, and he thanks every Sage there is that his mother isn't here to berate him.
Because now that he's said these things aloud, he realizes just how stupid he was.
Shikaku gives him a look.
"Yeah, I heard it," he scowls.
"Sakura's self-worth and self-esteem has reduced to that of a squirrel because she's been given a one-track-minded sensei and saddled with two powerhouses. One of her teammates is a traitor who effectively left her vulnerable in the middle of the village before escaping, and the other ran away to train to bring back said traitor, and they both left the village—left her, in the end. Team Seven was also isolated because Kakashi didn't expose his students to their other peers like how the rest of the Genin teachers did," Shikaku unnecessarily dumbs it down for him. "Of course, she has trust issues. Of course, she's going to run herself into the ground. The more work, the more training—the more distractions she has, it means she doesn't have to think about what led her to this place."
"She pretty much told me as much last night," Shikamaru confesses.
"Ino-chan is," Shikaku sighs tiredly. "When people don't understand the way someone does something, it can scare them. Sakura-chan has turned herself into a valuable weapon, Shikamaru, and that makes her unrecognizable to Ino-chan. Inoichi's been too soft on her, I know. But the faster she realizes that Sakura has grown up and become her own person, things will get better."
"I feel like it's a matter of miscommunication," Shikamaru says after a long while. "Sakura feels like Ino doesn't respect her, and that causes Sakura to distance herself—I mean, I wrote her off in the beginning, whether it's due to my frustrations or her and I just not getting along..."
"But it's different now," Shikaku hums.
"It felt like I didn't know her," he says quietly, "And I thought we were friends, back then."
"Friends don't treat friends the way you did."
It was an unknowingly soft spot, his father prodded at. Shikamaru's unavoidable guilt of letting Sakura wither while the rest of her peers were in a better place inevitably ate at him. By manipulating the situation to get Sakura to join his team and advance in her career unknowingly felt like making amends.
There are no selfless good deeds.
"Shikamaru," Shikaku calls ou,t surprisingly gentle, "Relationships are not like shogi, there is no conquering or costs here. You have to be patient. Sakura has to make her own choices. You just have to be there for her."
Shikamaru rolls over onto his pillow and exhales with a shudder. His dad rubs his back soothingly and then turns to look at him, knowingly pathetic, "How do I fix this?"
His dad stares at him blankly and thinks with mild trepidation that his wife would answer this question better. But Yoshino is asleep, and his only son is asking him like he has the answer to life's problems. The best solution is to gain as much information as possible, he cocks an eyebrow, "When did you start dating Sakura-chan, anyway?"
Much to Shikaku's delight, Shikamaru's ears burned a bright maroon.
—
Shikamaru does not know what he's going to say to Ino. He's torn between throttling her and sulking. Partially because this is his fault. He should've spoken to his team about Sakura, but uncharacteristically, he was caught up in the fantasy, the reality of the romance he was curating in his head like a novel was starkly different from the romance he was living in.
But his father was unfortunately right.
He had to draw the line somewhere.
Boundaries.
It's a new dynamic he had to learn. Shinobi had their own personal drawbacks when it came to relationships: trauma, violence, co-dependency, obsession, and dissociation. These were all complications that were the results of a successful shinobi career. Inoichi had once called it the rite of passage and had explained in the same breath that if it were not treated correctly, it could lead to the shinobi's downfall.
It's why T&I is much more than just torture and interrogation.
Removing boundaries is the only way to ensure complete trust in comrades on missions—there is no other solution. However, failure to switch that mental function could lead to disaster. His father had explained vaguely that Kakashi, was a prime example.
Ino opens the door, and Shikamaru holds up the pumpkin cheesecake to her face before she can open her mouth.
"I also have barbeque," Shikamaru speaks first and holds up another bag to his side, sheepishly. "For Chouji."
Ino thins her lips but looks at the sweet offering with a mild hesitation before grabbing the cake and walking back inside.
It's going well, he thinks dryly, and closes the door behind him.
Chouji is already at the table with a plate of riceballs and green tea. Shikamaru raises a brow at that, he knows that Chouji prefers meat and something with vinegar, not so much a rice lover as he is with noodles. He slides the bag of BBQ on the table and is mildly pleased when he snaps open the foil.
"Right," Shikamaru sighs as Ino digs into the cake without looking at him. "Let's start with the basics: did you know that Kakashi-sensei was in the hospital?"
Ino pauses mid-bite and thinks, " I was there when the ANBU brought him in. I heard that he had emergency surgery and they blocked off part of the ICU for him."
He nods, "He almost died."
Chouji stops eating and looks at him with wide eyes, "What do you mean?"
"Tsunade-sama had to rush to the ER, and Shizune had to order an entire wing to be cleared because Kakashi-sensei is a high-priority shinobi. Apparently, medics need clearance to treat him due to the sensitive nature of his person," Shikamaru explains and takes a seat. "Sakura wasn't even allowed to treat him because we both finally managed to secure a summoning contract earlier that day. Our chakra was nearly at the bottom twenty percent, and assisting in a surgery with her chakra levels is against hospital protocol. If Sakura had participated in the surgery, she would have been in a coma. I ended up helping her in the labs during the surgery instead."
"You were in the labs?" Ino frowns at sticks her fork harder into her cheesecake. "I thought only medics and scientists were cleared to be in that area."
"Sakura wasn't exactly..." The Nara picks his words carefully. "In the right mental state to help. Remember, her chakra levels were abysmal, and she was exhausted. The fact that it was her sensei in the hospital...she didn't have the focus she needed at the moment. Besides, I'm sure you know that medics aren't allowed to operate on family—or friends."
Though Kakashi was neither—it still hurt her.
"Oh?" she asks scathingly and drops her fork on the table. Glee and horror curl in her stomach like a snake, but her frustration overcomes her common sense. "Yet, everyone thinks she's the second Tsunade. Are you telling me that Forehead Girl suddenly wasn't good enough to be in the operating room? How pathetic."
Shikamaru snaps with curl of his lip, "What's pathetic is your jealousy, Ino."
Chouji flinches, but otherwise did not say anything. He knew that Ino needed a good telling off; he had caught the ending of Inoichi's lecture with her before he arrived, and while she looked furious, she understood. At least, Chouji thought she understood where her father was coming from.
Ino freezes at the anger in her old friend's voice. Her fingers curl into a fist, nails biting the inside of her palms at the reprimand. She hisses with burning eyes, "Shikamaru—"
"I have put up with your snide comments about Sakura for years," he grits his teeth and slaps his hand on the table. "I should've stopped you the moment it started, but I didn't because I, like you, had written Sakura off, and I will always carry that shame with me. I became indifferent, complacent. I know I should have done something; I can't take it back. I have taken steps to correct my behavior, but she was your best friend, Ino, and the moment Sakura decided to make something about herself, you got insecure."
A direct jab to Ino's strong point.
"I didn't get insecure!" she replies back heatedly and grasps for straws. "She's just—she's everywhere!" Ino's fingers shake. "If she's not training with Tsunade-sama, I hear about her from the nurses who gossip about her helping each of them in the wards. How she doesn't complain, how she works endlessly on the paperwork so some of the civilian doctors can rest, how she makes friends with the terminally ill patients up on the fourth floor—" She gasps, her breath staggered underwater, overwhelmed. "How she's kind and hardworking and—and—"
"How she doesn't need you anymore," Chouji finishes softly.
Ino looks at him with cloudy blue eyes.
Sakura doesn't need her anymore—doesn't even want her as a friend.
And it hurts.
Ino had thought their relationship had gotten better after the chunin exams. They were speaking again, a few comments here and there, and she would come to the flower shop every so often for herbs. She thought they were getting better, but it was like putting a band-aid over a badly clotting wound—barely stopping the bleeding, barely keeping it together.
Just barely.
Shikamaru glances at Chouji, who shakes his head in weariness. He softens his approach, just a little, "Ino, can you honestly tell me that the reason you became a medic was to be close to Sakura again?"
Words of denial stick to the inside of her throat, choking her with lies, and she presses her lips together to prevent the wobble.
Part of growing up is living with the pain and mistakes of their youth, Shikamaru realizes a little too late. Ino knows what she has done is wrong, knows how she handled the situation was wrong, but she doesn't have the maturity to dig herself out of the chasm she created with her bare hands.
She doesn't know how to stop self-destructing without putting herself in the line of fire.
Yet that was the only answer.
The honest truth is: Ino misses Sakura and misses the safety of their relationship they had in the early years of her childhood. She regrets not being strong enough to stop her from breaking off their friendship. She is resentful of Sakura for thriving without her. She is jealous of Sakura's continuous progress. She loves Sakura as much as she despises her for leaving her in the dust, and she doesn't know how to handle all these conflicting emotions.
Instead, it coils up all inside her like a ball of yarn, too complex and large to unwind. Her frustration and mortification builds and builds until it explodes into a pit of weariness and bitter regrets.
Perhaps, it isn't the right time for them to reconcile, he garners.
Shikamaru wonders if this is the smartest conclusion he's come up with.
"I am not going to sideline her again just for the sake of your comfort Ino," Shikamaru announces after a moment and shakes his head. Firm, "Not again; it was wrong the first time. She means too much to me. You need to figure out how to handle her being in my life—staying in my life—" he pauses, the sappiness of his past daydreams bleeding into reality the more he thought about it.
Becoming my life.
Shikamaru was just a boy, with teenage fantasies, and if they were more romantic than other boys', well, he could blame his mother—or father.
Or both.
Both sounds correct.
He realizes that his talk with Sakura was a little biased – he makes a note to speak to her later about his thoughts – and he will adjust accordingly. He's not going to play both sides, even though Sakura is the more rational one of the two in the end. He won't nudge her now that he knows where Ino stands. It's Sakura's turn to sit back while Ino figures out how to apologize; he just needs to hold her hand when it happens.
"As your girlfriend?" Chouji asks with a raised brow and finishes his rice.
Shikamaru scratches the back of his neck and clears his throat, "Yes. Well, I haven't asked her...exactly."
"You haven't asked her," Ino repeats dumbfounded, her anxiety less now that half the cake has disappeared.
"The day Kakashi was in the hospital...is the day we kissed, and we haven't," he sighs before slamming his head on the table. "I haven't spoken to her about it yet—everything happened so fast...and then with the exams coming up, we had a lot of training sessions followed by my daily lectures on diplomacy. I don't know."
"That's fairly recent," Chouji decides to throw him a bone. As hurt and disappointed as he was in Shikamaru, he could understand the stress and nerves that his best friend was going through.
"It is," Shikamaru pauses and looks up. "My relationship with Sakura is complicated, I guess, and I know I should've mentioned something about it changing, but at the same I didn't think I had to."
"You didn't think you had to tell us you were dating my best friend?" Ino scowls furiously.
"Your ex-best friend," he corrects not unkindly, and Ino winces. "And no. This is—this is new and private, and I have to draw a line in the sand somewhere. This is it. Sakura is my boundary. You guys are my family, but Sakura might be mine one day, and I have to protect her too."
It was horribly understated and grievously overexplained, but Shikamaru believes he's got the point across.
But ultimately, the looming conclusion is that: Sakura, at some point, might become the family that he chooses over them.
Shikaku was correct on that aspect: boundaries.
For close-knit relationships and bonds like most shinobi have, it's important to keep certain aspects of their life separate, to encourage healthy behaviors and actions. He wished he had considered this angle before, but even the most intelligent can lack in other areas, and if there is one thing Shikamaru hates, it's unsolved puzzles.
"We understand," Chouji knows, on some level, that a relationship that new – especially because Shikamaru requires line graphs to define relationships towards himself – needs time to grow into a definition, and if they constantly needle for information, that time gap grows larger. He looks at the blonde pointedly, "Right, Ino?"
Ino deflates at Chouji's soft insistence, "Right."
Pleased, Shikamaru continues, "I'm not asking you guys to—I don't know, not ask me things, but understand that my relationship with Sakura means a lot to me despite your thoughts." He shoots a look at Ino, "And I hope, one day, that you all will understand that."
Chouji frowns, "Shouldn't you be talking to Sakura about this?"
"I could," he shrugs. "But I like not knowing where we stand. We have a lot of stuff going on and putting a label on what we have, at least now, might destroy the balance we created, and..." He smiles, "I think she likes it too; I can be patient."
Ino looks at him with a small smile, "You really like her."
Shikamaru shrugs, suddenly bashful.
"Are you happy, Shikamaru?" Chouji asks after a long moment and widens his brown eyes. "Because I mean, that all is what matters in the end, right?"
The blonde agrees.
Shikamaru considers the question, finally satisfied with their reactions. His cheeks pinken at the curious eyes, and he shifts his gaze to a nearby plant in the corner of the dining room. He answers with another question, "I wonder if she's happy too."